


Transference

by VagrantWriter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: ASoIaF Kink Meme, Dubious Consent, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-03-19 01:16:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3590883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VagrantWriter/pseuds/VagrantWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sometimes the only way Theon can deal with the relationship he had with Ramsay is recreating it with Jon as him and himself as Ramsay. Jon doesn't consent to recreating it.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Jon jolted awake with a start. The room was dark. It was still night. Why had he woken up?

The dream was still fresh in the trembling of his limbs and his sweat-soaked skin. Usually, in his dreams, _he_ was the wolf—running, chasing, hunting. But tonight, he was the one being hunted. He could still hear the low growling in his ear, could still feel the bite of teeth as the beasts had grabbed his wrists and pulled tight enough to tear his arms from their sockets. He remembered the helplessness of being forced onto his back, face and belly exposed, and how he’d kicked out.

His leg twitched. Had he woken himself up? It hardly felt like he _had_ woken up, it was so cold. Except he was no longer wading through waist-deep snow, but in his room at Castle Black, in his bed. The fire had burned out, and somehow he must have managed to throw the blankets off in his tossing and turning. The nights were getting colder. And darker. He was lucky he hadn’t frozen half to death already.

As he waited for his heart to slow, something moved. A shadow at the end of his bed. His heart clenched at the realization he wasn’t alone. When he tried to sit up, he was jerked back onto the bed, a strange stinging in his wrists. Images of blood-soaked teeth came unbidden to his mind. He couldn’t feel his hands, couldn’t move them. They were bound to the headboard by coarse rope. Too tight. Far too tight. His fingers twitched uselessly, and a creeping numbness began to take hold of his arms.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

The figure jolted and receded back into the shadows.

“Who are you? Show yourself.”

A bit of moonlight filtered in through the narrow window, just enough to reveal the figure who stepped forward into its beam, cautiously, hesitantly. Theon Greyjoy looked like a ghost, the moon silver against his white hair and white skin. He didn’t say anything, just reached for Jon’s foot and pulled his leg taut towards the footboard. Jon heard the hiss of more rope being uncoiled.

“What are you doing? What is this?”

Theon made quick work of tying his left foot. For a man with half his fingers missing, he was surprisingly adept with a knot. No matter how much Jon struggled, he couldn’t work his ties loose, not on his wrists and not on the ankle now bound to the bedpost.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Jon repeated.

Without answering, Theon went on to the next foot, pulling it to the other bedpost. Jon kicked out, knocking Theon’s weak grasp away. Theon stepped back with an odd look on his face, part fear, part frustration.

“I gave you a _second chance_ ,” Jon barked. Now that the initial surprise had worn off, white-hot anger began to build. “Gods help me, I could have let Stannis execute you, but I let you take the black. You swore an oath. This is treason. This is—”

“Quiet,” Theon hissed.

“I’ll see you hanged for this, Theon Greyjoy.”

The slap was unexpected. It didn’t hurt, because Theon had no strength to put behind such a gesture, but it still startled Jon into silence. He watched in some mix of confusion and horror as the ruined man climbed up on the bed and straddled his remaining free leg, forcing it down with what little weight he had. He resumed his work of tying it.

“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand, thousand times,” he said as he worked. His voice was strange, high and lilting and mocking. “There’s nobody here who answers to that name.”

He slid off the bed, and Jon realized he had been tied spread eagle, arms and legs wide. Unable to fight back or protect himself. Of course that was the only way Theon could hope to take him—by surprise and in the dead of night.

“Listen to me,” Jon hissed. “ _You_ are a brother of the Night’s Watch. _I_ am your lord commander. What you’re doing—”

His breath caught as something glinted in the moonlight, something in Theon’s hand. A knife. Fairly blunt. Not a weapon, then, or at least not _meant_ to be a weapon. Had Theon smuggled that out of the dining hall? How long had he been planning this?

“Satin!” Jon cried. “Someone! Help, I’m being attacked!”

Theon raised the knife and held it against Jon’s throat. He could feel its rusted blade. Blunted, but sharp enough to cut meat. Sharp enough to cut flesh.

“Go ahead and scream,” Theon continued in that voice, with forced mirth behind it. “Yell. Cry out.” He pressed harder on the knife, and Jon winced. “See who comes. They know you’re here. They know what I’m doing to you. They don’t care.”

Jon’s throat constricted. The other brothers knew? Was this another mutiny? Why would they send Theon to do their dirty work?

“The fact is,” Theon continued with an awful grin full of broken teeth, “your daddy left you here to rot.”

It was a punch to the gut. “What?”

“Nobody wanted you back home. They were glad to be rid of you. Who’d ever want something so…useless? Stupid, ugly, and useless?”

Jon searched for something to say, some rebuttal. He couldn’t find it.

“And Robb? You must have some delusions to think you were _ever_ a brother to him. You were a charity case…until you weren’t. Now, he’d _thank_ me for this.” The knife pressed harder. A sharper blade would have drawn blood.

“Theon—”

Another slap, no more powerful than the last.

“There’s. Nobody here. By that name.” His voice broke and lost that mirthful, high-pitched edge. “How many times do I have to teach you this? How many times do I have to carve it into your skin before your thick brain understands? Reek. It rhymes with _weak_. It rhymes with _don’t speak_.”

Understanding _did_ dawn on Jon then. Was Theon sleepwalking? Acting out some nightmare?

“You’re not in your right mind,” he said in his best level voice. “Untie me now, before you do something you regret.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do.” Theon took a step back, but before Jon could feel relief at having the knife gone from his throat, the other man was climbing back onto the bed. He was so light, the mattress didn’t even dip as he landed a knee of either side of Jon’s prone body, straddling him. His pupils were merely pinpricks as he stared down from above. “I’m the one giving the orders now. _I’m_ the one with the knife.” He brandished his weapon. “ _You’re_ the one on the cross.”

Jon looked up at his hands, down at his feet. Spread out. Tied down. On a cross.

He cocked his head. The voice. The smile. It was beginning to make sense. “Who _are_ you?” he asked, suspecting the answer.

“You know my name. Or do I have to teach you _that_ again too?”

A beat of silence. Theon’s breathing was ragged, and Jon’s was no steadier.

“Ramsay,” Jon answered at last.

“Master,” Theon corrected with another feeble slap. The handle of the knife in his clenched fist, the bones jutting out from his knuckles, hit harder than anything. “ _Master_ Ramsay. Master Ramsay _Bolton_.” He punctuated each name with another slap. It was clear he was putting as much effort as he could into his strikes, because his limbs were shaking and a sheen of sweat had appeared on his sallow brow. He was trying to hurt Jon. Trying and failing. “Stupid. Useless. Ugly.”

Jon understood. He wasn’t going to play this game.

“Theon, untie me.”

“No one here by that name.”

“Theon, I’m serious. Untie me this instant or I’ll have you beheaded come first light.”

“Stop. Using. That. Name.” Theon dropped the knife. It rolled off the bed and clattered on the floor, and Jon was glad to be rid of it. Then Theon’s mangled hands were around his throat, and though he was weak, he was able to squeeze enough that Jon began to choke. “You don’t get to argue with me. If I tell you to crawl in the dirt, you crawl. If I tell you to bark like a dog, you bark.”

“Theon…” Jon croaked out.

“If I tell you I’m going to flay one of your fingers, you tell me which one and _thank_ me for the privilege.”

“The…” It was getting harder to breathe. Jon’s legs twitched uselessly in their binds.

“If I tell you I’m going to stuff you with my cock, you…you get on your knees and…and ask which hole.”

Jon gasped as the room began to go white. The world was only Theon’s face above him, gaunt and hollow, silver in the moonlight. He wasn’t smiling anymore. His bottom lip was twitching. He seemed to be having trouble getting the words out. Or maybe Jon just wasn’t hearing right.

“If I tell you to hurt Lady Arya…you…don’t question…” His eyes shimmered wetly, and Jon felt his own eyes prickling in response. “You get her on _her_ knees and ask…which…”

“Oh…Theon…”

It came out as hardly a whisper, and yet the other man’s eyes went wide, as if Jon had screamed it at him. His hands fell away, and he laid his head on Jon’s chest. “…no one…by that name…”

“Theon,” Jon repeated. “You’re Theon. Theon Greyjoy. That’s your name.”

Theon looked up. His eyes had overflowed, thin tear trails making their way down his cheeks.

“I know he tried to take your name away. I know he…did things to you. Horrible things. I know he made you feel powerless. But this isn’t the way to deal with it. The only way to beat him is to _be_ Theon Greyjoy.”

“Reek. Bleak. Sneak. Eke.”

“Theon!” Jon shouted, bringing his attention back. “If you untie me, I won’t punish you. But you have to do it now.”

Theon’s eyes went even larger and tears began spilling over in earnest. He slid off the bed and fumbled in the dark for the knife. He came back, and for a split second, Jon thought he might actually go through with his initial plan. Instead, he began sawing the ropes binding his legs. Between the blunt knife and Theon’s weak arms, it took some doing, and when he was done, he approached Jon’s hands like a timid rabbit. He cut the rope holding his left hand and jumped back out of reach, as if expecting Jon to attack the moment he got free.

Jon grunted in annoyance and reached across to undo the last bit of binding. Then he sat up, slowly, rubbing his wrists to coax feeling back into them. Theon stood in the far corner, still gripping the knife. Jon wondered if he was thinking of using it on himself.

“I meant it,” Jon said, breaking the awkward silence. “I’m not going to punish you. I’m willing to overlook this…one time. But if you try anything like that again, you’ll force my hand. Do you understand?”

Wordlessly, Theon nodded.

“Good. Come here.”

Theon eyed him mistrustfully.

“I just said I wasn’t going to punish you.” Jon patted the spot beside him on the bed.

Theon dropped the knife and shuffled with agonizing slowness to the bed. He climbed up and tucked his spindly legs against his chest, curling in on himself. “I’m sorry.”

Jon nodded. “If anybody asks, I’ll tell them the truth. You had a nightmare and came to find me.”

Theon leaned his head against Jon’s shoulder, and Jon allowed it.

“Tell me about your dream, Theon.”

Theon turned and buried his face in Jon’s chest, hands fisting in his nightshirt like mangled claws. His shoulders began to shake as he cried, and it felt like he was trying to burrow inside to hide. Jon put his arms around his shoulders and lowered the both of them back onto the bed, sitting back up to grab hold of the sheets and heavy furs. He cocooned the both of them in what warmth he could and cradled the fragile body close.

He couldn’t say why. He’d allowed Theon to take the black, but that didn’t mean he’d forgiven him. Maybe he never would, but he still couldn’t bring himself to hate the man. Maybe because he no longer looked like the Theon he’d known growing up in Winterfell, or talked like him or acted like him. Or maybe he had seen too much suffering to take joy in this pitiful creature’s misery.

Whatever the reason, when he finally felt Theon relax in his arms and heard his breathing even out, he hoped the young man’s dreams were untroubled.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part II. A fill for this prompt, kinda. (It kinda turned into something else, sorry.)
> 
> Jon/Theon, BDSM  
>  _After the whole Ramsay thing, Theon ends up at the wall with Jon. Except Theon is far more broken than Jon remembers. And Theon is so used to Ramsay telling him what to do (such as eat, sleep, etc.) and when. Seeing Theon's distress, Jon takes up that position only in a much more caring way. But Jon does like having the power to do Theon, who was such a brat before, doing whatever he says._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cleaning out the folders for my next project. Found I had shelved this one because it didn't quite fit the prompt. It is a continuation of the first chapter, though.

“Alright,” Jon breathed, “we’ll start easy.” It was obvious he was trying to add some huskiness to his voice, but even in the dark, he was a poor substitute for Ramsay. The weight hovering over him wasn’t right, the hand stroking his chest was too gentle. But he was trying.

If Theon closed his eyes and focused on the way his arms and legs were pulled tight, tied spread eagle to the bed, he could pretend. Even if the leather straps Jon used were softer and loose enough that he could pull free if he wanted—quite an achievement, considering how weak he was—and he wasn’t upright with his arms forced to bear the weight of his body, this was still familiar. Familiar enough that it didn’t take much to send his mind back to that place.

“What’s your name?” Jon asked in that husky voice.

His fingers were too slender to be Ramsay’s, but they had the same kind of deftness to them. Theon could imagine him taking a knife, a flaying knife, and forcing the thin blade under his skin. He could imagine Jon wrapping those deft fingers around his neck and squeezing. He could imagine Jon breaking his fingers one by one and smiling as he screamed and begged him to stop. And Jon would just say that he deserved it, for what he’d done to Bran and Rickon, what he’d done to the servants of Winterfell, what he’d done to Robb.

It was very real, then. How much Jon must hate him, how much mercy he must have in his heart to have allowed Theon to take the Black instead of executing him straight out. A heart overflowing with mercy, just like Ramsay.

“R-Reek,” he answered.

Jon’s hands stilled. “Is it?”

“It rhymes with sneak.”

Jon frowned, and that was terrifying. He’d done something wrong, said the wrong thing. You could only push mercy so far.

“Reek,” he cried again. His arms and legs trembled in their binds, but he didn’t dare pull free. Master would be so angry if he did. This was a test. He had to show that he understood. He wouldn’t try to escape. He would show that he was loyal and obedient and deserving of mercy, even though they both knew he wasn’t. “It rhymes with meek, weak, bleak, freak—”

“Shh.” The rasp went out of Jon’s voice. A hand was soft and gentle in his hair, but whose hand was that? It couldn’t be Jon’s. Why would he be so gentle, and why were his eyes so full of pity? “Calm down. Take a deep breath. Do you want me to untie you?” Without waiting for an answer, he sat up on his knees and began to undo the binding on Theon’s wrist.

“No, wait.” He realized he was panting. “Please.”

Jon stopped.

Theon took a deep breath. “No, I…I’m fine. I want to keep going.”

Jon nodded and settled back onto Theon’s hips, not quite pressing down with his weight. Ramsay always made this sort of thing feel intimate, digging his hardness into Theon’s bare skin as he whispered in his ear, “See what you do to me?” But he couldn’t feel anything from Jon, not through the layers of their clothes, and no indication on the Lord Commander’s face showed that this was causing that reaction at all. Jon wasn’t enjoying this. Not in that way. Not in any way, it seemed. It made Theon guilty for having requested such a thing. He’d give Jon the answer he wanted to hear.

“Theon,” he said. “My name is Theon. It rhymes with…eon.”

Jon smiled and patted his face, gently. Ramsay had done that too, when he was pleased, but Jon’s hands were soft and carried no hint of threat. It gave Theon courage to continue.

He needed something better than eon. Ramsay hated it when he got lazy with his rhyming.

_Eke is just Reek without the R. Try again._

“It rhymes with…Jon.” He winced at that. That was even lazier.

_If you insist on being lazy, you can just stay on the cross all night._

“It rhymes…” he tried again. “It rhymes with paean.”

“No,” Jon said, frowning slightly. “I mean, yes, I suppose it does. But that’s not something you should think of yourself as.”

“Even if I am?”

Jon’s dark brows furrowed. “Think of something else.”

“It rhymes with…” He thought, he really did. It had been so much easier when he was Reek. “Prion. Theon rhymes with prion.”

Another thoughtful pause. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a type of bird,” Theon said. “Like a gull. We have them on the Iron Islands.”

“Then, yes, that’s good.” Jon ran a hand through Theon’s hair. It didn’t comb through so easily, the white strands brittle and knotted, even after repeated washings. “Theon is from the Iron Islands, isn’t he?”

“He was,” Theon said. “He was also from Winterfell.”

Jon’s hand stopped, and Theon feared he’d said the wrong thing. Not in the way he feared saying the wrong thing to Ramsay, but still in the way that he may have stretched Jon’s mercy to its limits. He shouldn’t have brought up Winterfell. He shouldn’t have reminded Jon that he had every cause to the hate the husk of the man tied to his bed.

“We were, weren’t we?” Jon said at last.

Silence. The fire crackled in the hearth. It burned nearly night and day, and every day it seemed to do less and less good against the cold. The wind whipped at the windows outside, and tomorrow they would wake up to a fresh layer of snow several feet high. Theon would wrap himself in as many furs as he thought he deserved and shiver as he went about what pathetic few tasks he could manage these days. He would be cold, and Jon would be cold to him, once again the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, and Theon just another new recruit. There would be no shared moments like this outside these walls.

Jon lifted his head. “I’m sorry. I’m the one who broke character.” He shook out his hair and cleared his throat, and when he spoke next, that same ridiculous rasp was back. “Good. Good. You know your name. Now let’s try something else. Who am I?”

“Ramsay Bolton,” Theon said half-heartedly.

“I said—”Jon slapped him across the face. It wasn’t a hard strike at all, more like something you’d give a child when he reached for a sweet before dinner. It still stung. It jolted Theon’s entire body, and he nearly pulled free of the binds merely from trying to shrink in on himself. “—who _am_ I?”

“Master!” he cried, remembering himself in time. “Master Ramsay! Master Ramsay Bolton!”

Another slap to the other side of his face. “Who. Am. I?”

“Master.”

“Is that what I taught you?” The body above him shifted, and then Theon felt a warm breath in his ear. “Is that really my name, or is that something I taught you to say because I wanted so badly to hear it? Is that really what you want to call me?”

Theon shook his head. “N-no.”

“Do you and I want the same thing, Theon? Do we both want my name to be Master Ramsay Bolton?”

“No.” Theon’s limbs were trembling again, but he wasn’t sure it was entirely in fear.

“I wear you down, Theon, because the smaller you become, the larger I become in comparison. So, go ahead. Make me larger. Call me Master Ramsay Bolton.”

“No!” Theon sat up, pulling the loose bindings free. He pushed the body off of him. “Bastard. Bastard! You’re a bastard, a Snow. That’s your name. Snow the Bastard!” He flung himself at the body, lashing out with fists and fingernails, those that were left to him at least.

Hands wrapped around his wrists, and he found himself being pulled against that body. It wasn’t as large and solid as Ramsay, though. Not as utterly domineering and dominating. Not as cold and unfeeling.

Theon came back to himself in Jon’s arms.

“Shh, shh.” Jon’s warm breath whistled through his hair. “You did well. You did very well.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“No, no. None of that.”

Jon held him as he trembled at his own audacity. He’d struck his Lord Commander, his Master. It was terrifying. It was wonderful. He’d never felt so light, like Jon was the only thing keeping him tethered to the ground. That was when he realized the leather straps were still bound to his wrists, and he sat back to undo them. He pushed Jon back and began working at the knots while his remaining fingers shook.

“Is that…?” Jon coughed awkwardly into his closed fist. “Is that what you wanted?”

Theon nodded and hoped Jon saw. He was too tired to speak.

“Did that…help?”

“I think.” He voice was as weak as he felt. “I feel…better.” He finished untying his wrists and bent to undo his ankles, but Jon lifted his legs into his lap and began undoing them himself. His fingers were deft. And gentle. “Could we…do this again?”

Jon made a small humming noise but didn’t look up from his work. “If you think it will continue to help.” He pulled the last knot done and looked expectantly at Theon. “Do you want to sleep here again tonight?”

“Would you let me?”

“I offered, didn’t I?”

He wanted so badly to ask why Jon was being so kind, where he found that deep well of mercy for such a miserable creature. But he was too tired, and the moment was too peaceful to ruin. He allowed Jon to pull the covers back and then climbed in beside him, settling in to feel the hot breath on the nape of his neck. Jon fell asleep quickly, and though Theon was terribly tired himself, he lay awake, listening to the other man’s breathing and trying not to remember how Ramsay’s breathing had sounded so similar.


End file.
